Coweta beats state in final year of CRCT

Fri, 07/11/2014 - 10:38amBen Nelms

The Coweta County School System in the final year of the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) outperformed the state of Georgia on all grades and subjects. The CRCT test will be replaced with the new Georgia Milestones Assessment System during the 2014-2015 school year.

The CRCT measures student mastery of Georgia’s basic curriculum in the subjects of reading, English/language arts, math, science and social studies in grades 3-8.

School system spokesman Dean Jackson said, “The 2014 CRCT results released by the Ga. Dept. of Education show that Coweta students met or exceeded the standards at a higher rate than the state of Georgia as a whole in all 30 areas covered by the test. Coweta County School System passage rates were also higher than state rates in all 30 areas in 2013.”

“I am proud of our teachers and students and the efforts they make every day,” said Superintendent Steve Barker. “They are achieving at a high level of success and continuing to improve on that success from year to year.”

In all, said Jackson, Coweta’s 2014 CRCT test performance improved in 17 of 30 areas over its 2013 performance.

Jackson said 89.3 percent of Coweta County first graders met or exceeded CRCT standards in social studies. That figure is six percentage points higher than the state overall and represents a five percentage point improvement over Coweta County students’ 2013 passage rate, Jackson said.

Approximately 96 percent of Coweta’s fifth grade students met or exceeded standards on CRCT reading tests and on CRCT English and language arts tests, while 90.3 percent met or exceeded the math standards and 86.4 percent met or exceeded science standards.

Coweta schools outperformed the state by nearly seven percentage points in eighth grade math (with 88.2 percent meeting or exceeding standards compared to 81.5 percent in Georgia as a whole).

Coweta schools also outperformed state passage rates by five percentage points in seventh grade math (93 percent compared to 87.6 percent for the state) and seven percentage points in sixth grade math (91.2 percent compared to 84.1 percent for the state), Jackson said.

Jackson said 98.1 percent of Coweta eighth grade students met or exceeded CRCT standards for reading, 96.3 percent met or exceeded the standards for English and language arts and 86.7 percent met or exceeded the standards for social studies. The 2014 passage rates for Coweta students were also higher in 2014 than in 2013, Jackson added.

When ranked among the 182 Georgia school systems, Coweta County schools ranked in the top third of the state in the majority of grades and subjects tested, said Jackson.

“With changes coming this year in state assessments, we will continue to focus our efforts on meeting the needs of all of our students,” said Barker.

Georgia Milestones will be aligned to the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) in English/Language Arts and mathematics and Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) in science and social studies.